World War Z

Based on the novel by Max Brooks, World War Z details the chaos that ensues on a global scale in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse – with the movie following Brad Pitt’s Gerry Lane as he attempts to find a cure for the deadly plague. Filmmaker Marc Forster, working from Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard, and Damon Lindelof’s screenplay, opens the proceedings with an impressively tense sequence involving Gerry’s first contact with the undead, with the effectiveness of this stretch priming the viewer for an uncommonly engrossing Hollywood blockbuster. That feeling proves to be all-too-short-lived, however, as World War Z slows down considerably after that point – as Forster places a continuing emphasis on Gerry’s rather dull investigation into the origins of the zombie infestation. The procedural-like vibe that ensues – ie CSI: Zombies – is just about as anticlimactic and uninteresting as it sounds, and Forster exacerbates the increasingly uninvolving atmosphere by offering up a series of dull, incoherent action set pieces. (Forster’s reliance on shaky camerawork is nothing short of disastrous, with the pervasive darkness of many of the film’s high-octane moments certainly not helping matters.) World War Z does, however, briefly bounce back with a suirprisingly engrossing stretch set within Jerusalem, as this segment possesses a vitality and originality that’s otherwise completely absent from the proceedings (ie the zombies move and attack in a manner that’s nothing short of breathtaking). The inevitable return to Gerry’s progressively tedious investigation paves the way for a hopelessly anticlimactic third act, with one’s inability to muster up an ounce of interest in the character’s exploits, which is compounded by Pitt’s bland, one-dimensional performance, ensuring that the movie’s final half hour progresses at a snail’s crawl. The end result is a sporadically passable yet terminally misguided blockbuster that squanders its promising setup, and there’s little doubt that the film stands as definitive proof that Forster should stick with small, low-key dramas.

** out of ****